Microsoft Needs 3 Surface Tablets: 3 Reasons

Microsoft is having trouble selling the Surface tablets it
already makes. But here's why adding a third would be a smart move.

10 Ways Microsoft Could Improve Surface Tablets

(click image for larger view and for slideshow)

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said Thursday that his company is working with Microsoft on a new Surface RT tablet. Given that earlier reports have indicated Microsoft is also testing devices with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 chip, it's looking increasingly possible that the company will replace its underachieving Surface tablet with not one, but two new products.

Given these challenges, it might seem counterintuitive for Microsoft to expand a product line it's already struggling to sell. It might be better to shore up the existing lineup before burning through the extra R&D, factory and advertising money that additional models would entail.

Then again, if the current tablets' respective market positions aren't working, a shake-up might be precisely what the Surface brand needs. Here are three reasons Microsoft should make three different Surface tablets.

1. Three tablets would provide an entry point and an upgrade path.

When Microsoft first priced its Surface tablets, it made a colossal miscalculation, assuming that it could simply follow Apple into the high-margin device business. If Microsoft had released a tablet three years ago, perhaps this plan would have worked. But Microsoft was late to the game and Apple has an entrenched user base in the premium market. Consequently, Microsoft needs to follow something more akin to the Android model: produce budget-friendly flagship products that increase adoption and funnel users toward the costlier, more profitable devices.
Three Surface models would allow Microsoft to pursue this sort of strategy.

From a components standpoint, a 7-inch Surface RT tablet with a Qualcomm chip shouldn't cost much more to produce than the Nexus 7. If Google can afford to price the Nexus 7 at $199, then Microsoft can certainly aim for similar build quality at a similar price. The Snapdragon chip should provide LTE support, allowing Microsoft to produce an ultra-mobile tablet that better highlights the company's cloud-based assets, such as SkyDrive and Bing apps. Support for Office, including Outlook, meanwhile means the device could be useful not only for content consumption but also as a BYOD companion device.

If the price is right, Microsoft could significantly boost Windows RT adoption, which would in turn lead to increased developer investment in the Modern UI. More developer activity would send benefits rippling across the entire Windows 8 ecosystem.

A second Surface RT model could provide both a bigger, nicer screen and an upgrade path for those who like the smaller RT model but need a device that's more suitable for heavier Microsoft Office tasks. It's hard to know how much demand there is for this sort of device, given that some Atom-based Windows 8 tablets could soon cost as little as $300. Unlike Window RT models, Atom-fueled machines can run desktop apps.

Nevertheless, if Microsoft can boost adoption with a low-cost RT model, it could at least buy itself the flexibility to continue developing larger more, capable RT devices.

The Surface Pro, meanwhile, will eventually gain a Haswell chip, leaving it as a premium model with long battery life and the ability to run x86 apps.

Thanks to Microsoft's cloud investments, the devices should sync well together, which could encourage some users to own multiple Surface tablets, and to use them in tandem.

As someone who spent an hour in the Microsoft store the other day, I think it's wrong to dismiss RT "sucks" despite its obvious limitations. The problem for me as a consumer was price. The Surface RT is a good little machine for people who don't need to run a wide array of applications. For example, it's fine for a journalist on the road or a student in a classroom. The big problem for me was price -- it should be considerably cheaper (it's currently on sale for $359, including Office for students). I think Redmond would sell a ton of these at $250. It might not make much money at that price, but it would gain a following.

I don't see how any good can come of a smaller Surface RT tablet, even if it's priced at $200 or even less. It will head into even more competitive terrain dominated by established players like the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD and iPad Mini. If the people didn't like the Windows 8 tile-based UI big they won't like it small either.

The key problem with the Windows 8 modern app world is crappy apps. It's kind of like when Java introduced a whole bunch of character-mode interface folks to GUIs. If you recall, Java AWT/Swing allowed the creation of some really, really BAD GUI apps. I believe it's possible to make great Windows modern apps but right now, experienced touch developers don't seem to be focused on Windows. That leaves us with predominantly inexperienced touch developers and crappy apps. That's a huge problem for Microsoft.

Of course, IMO, even Microsoft's own modern apps aren't great. Take the mail app. When you create a new message, the right side of the screen shows what appears to be some sort of template but it doesn't give you any clue as to the fact that you are to touch(click) the "Subject" part of the template and start typing or touch(click) the "body" area of the template and start typing. It looks like a sheet of paper with no obvious input areas or shadings to provide hints as to what the hell do I do with this? Plus the TO, CC and BCC areas are on the left side of a split screen. This is a complete departure from how Outlook presents information and accepts input.

After a while you get used to it but this is from a company that has a long history of GUI standards regarding placement of buttons, tool bars, menus, accelerator keys and default operations when ENTER is pressed. It's like some creative nut job fired all the pragmatic people and went wild. Of course it doesn't HAVE to be this way. Modern is fully capable of offering input boxes of various shadings that would immediately make the mail app more intuitive.

Windows problem is the apps and in Stevie's own sweat-slinging/spit-spraying/foot pounding words, "Developers, developers, developers."

Oh... I thought WP meant Windows Pro (WP). Regardless, I thought Windows Phone 8 (WP8) was using the same kernel. Isn't this shift why WP7 devices could not be upgraded to WP8? Isn't it all one OS and one experience as the slogan touts?

If M$FT can't sell one model, how will they sell 3 models of more or less the same junk.I live near the Oak Brook, IL mall which has both an Apple and Microsoft store.Guess which one is always crowded, and which is not?

So many pointless articles about how M$ could save Surface or save Win8. The bottom line is that people in general just don't like Win8 very much, and for most folks, the pain of using Win8 on a tablet outweighs the (very) few minor advantages over the alternative products. They can't be saved.

M$ clearly believes that if they don't make inroads into the mobile device market, they are doomed, but Win8 is a colossal failure and it just isn't going to work for them. Frankly, I can't imagine anything, including a super-cool gee-whiz replacement operating system, that would let them make a significant dent in the Apple/Android duopoly; there's just too much momentum there. There is absolutely no way short of giving devices away that Microsoft can entice people into buying Win8 tablets or phones in significant numbers.

I sometimes wonder if some of you know what an "IT Pro" is and what we do. One clue, we could care less about o/s, only what applications can run on the o/s. An o/s by itself is worthless.COBOL is still around, running key things like taking care of your money in the banking system, after 50+ years. It runs on servers, not client devices. For business applications on the server side, COBOL still makes more sense than java, regardless how many people actually use it today for such applications.

In the days leading up the first Surface release, people were PUMPED. Microsoft had the opportunity to make a substantial impact.However, in simple terms, RT sucks. It was a massive mistake; there should never have been a Windows RT. People were not so stoked. By the time the Surface Pro was released, MS's window was long gone.The problem isn't the hardware, its RT. Having more RT tablets isn't going to help MS at all.

RE: Join RT and WP. Other than the software Microsoft includes with RT(namely office), RT is a subset of Pro. When you say join them, Pro is already everything RT is except for add-on software. Is that what you mean by join (i.e. include free Office in Pro)?RT is nothing more than a version of Pro that runs on ARM. It's been recompiled and combined with an ARM HAL. IMO, it's Pro's genetic clone that ended up being Dr. Evil's "mini me". Of course RT won't run any x86 software because the ARM architecture doesn't speak x86.

To learn more about what organizations are doing to tackle attacks and threats we surveyed a group of 300 IT and infosec professionals to find out what their biggest IT security challenges are and what they're doing to defend against today's threats. Download the report to see what they're saying.

IT pros at banks, investment houses, insurance companies, and other financial services organizations are focused on a range of issues, from peer-to-peer lending to cybersecurity to performance, agility, and compliance. It all matters.

Join us for a roundup of the top stories on InformationWeek.com for the week of November 6, 2016. We'll be talking with the InformationWeek.com editors and correspondents who brought you the top stories of the week to get the "story behind the story."